[Chicago-talk] Replacing consecutive newlines with a single newline

[Steven Lembark]

> Why do people use a useless cat?
> 
> Why not just:
> 
>     cat inputfile | cat | cat | cat | cat | mailx ...
> 
> it's just about as wasteful?

Because they see things like this:

     All done. Patch successfully generated.
     To apply the patch to the system, proceed as follows:
     # cd /usr/src/linux
     # cat /scratch/DriverInstall/sk98lin_v10.61.3.3_2.6.25_patch | 
patch -p1

from a Marvell network driver. The fools who write
these don't understand *NIX or shell programming.
Having seen it there they end up stuck with it as
the picture in their head: oh, cat, I get it now...

blech...


-- 
Steven Lembark                                            85-09 90th St.
Workhorse Computing                                 Woodhaven, NY, 11421
lembark at wrkhors.com                                      +1 888 359 3508